Dedicated NAS vs Windows Sharing?

[scopesys]

Simply put, I have five siblings and several other family members who all do heavy media downloading. I figured its about time I set up a central system to minimize the usage on our bandwidth that way only one person downloads it and they all access it.

On my PC which runs 24/7, I have two 3TB desktop 7200RPM drives in my computer (not NAS) which are dedicated to media, I was wondering would simply sharing these drives do the trick?

Specs are:
Windows 10 x64 - Loaded on to 512GB SSD
i7-2600k - Was overclocked previously but I put it back down to stock speeds
16GB RAM
GTX980
Antec 900W PSU

I should note that heavy gaming at 1440p is done on this system as well as CAD work but I'm not too sure how this will affect my work if lets say, 2 full HD videos are being streamed at the same time (There are about 15 different systems which can connect to it (counting tablets and phones)). Also, all devices are either windows or android.

Is there any advantage to buying a separate NAS system, so far it seems that it would simply be an additional initial cost and actually increase power bills.

Also, would either system allow android devices to access the drive and play media?

 

[drtweak]

I had a dedicated windows system that I use (It use to also be my daily PC since it was very low power and with a SSD it ran just as fast as my gaming machine). it is a Celeron 1.8 Dual core with 8GB of ram running windows 7. I just use file sharing and I also have Apache setup on it and i can stream to any device with a compatible web browser anywhere in the world pretty much.

Now are the games on the 3TB's or no? Also are you heavy on the online gaming and is your network Gigabit/Wireless N at least?

 

[scopesys]

No the 3TB's don't have any games. I don't have any network cards, I have a direct connection to the motherboard via Ethernet from the modem/router.

The motherboard is an ASUS P8Z77-V LX.
The modem/router is a TPLink TD-W8980.

I only desire a LAN setup as the aim of this is to reduce bandwidth consumption.

Thanks

 

[drtweak]

Yea everything is gigabit. I would do a file share off your PC is it is left on all the time. It shouldn't affect anything too much. back when I had a Core2Quad and everything stored on that PC i would play some pretty high CPU/GPU intensive games and then my GF would watch TV being streamed for it and there was never an issue.